Robert Reich

Robert B. Reich, a co-founder of The American Prospect, is a Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. His website can be found here and his blog can be found here.

Recent Articles

AP Photo/Andrew Harnik President Donald Trump speaks during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House I keep hearing that if Trump fires Mueller, we’ll face a “constitutional crisis.” Or if Mueller subpoenas Trump to testify and Trump defies the subpoena, it’s a “constitutional crisis.” Or if Mueller delivers substantial evidence that Trump is guilty of colluding with Russia or of obstructing justice, and the House does nothing to impeach him, we have a “constitutional crisis.” Well, I have news for you. We’re already in a “constitutional crisis.” You see, the Constitution is a tiny document. It requires that presidents and others in positions of power be bound by norms, unwritten rules, and long-established understandings of their constitutional responsibilities. Yet look at what’s happened since January 2017: Trump fires the head of the FBI and conjures up a plot that the FBI installed a spy in his campaign; blames the entire Mueller investigation on a conspiratorial “deep...

AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster President Donald Trump waves during a rally at the Four Seasons Arena at Montana ExpoPark, in Great Falls, Montana A s the political season heats up, Trump is ramping up his lies through his three amplifiers: Fox News, rallies, and Twitter. According to The Fact Checker’s database , the average daily rate of Trump’s false or misleading claims is climbing. The problem isn’t just the number or flagrancy of the lies—for example, that Putin and the Russians didn’t intervene in the 2016 election on behalf of Trump, or that the Mueller investigation is part of a Democratic plot to remove him. And it’s not just that the lies are about big, important public issues—for example, that immigrants commit more crimes than native-born Americans, or trade wars are harmless. The biggest problem is his lies aren’t subject to the filters traditionally applied to presidential statements—a skeptical press, experts who debunk falsehoods, and respected politicians who publicly...

(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) President Trump waves during a rally at the Four Seasons Arena at Montana ExpoPark on July 5, 2018, in Great Falls, Montana, in support of Representative Greg Gianforte and Senate candidate Matt Rosendale. T rump promised to be America’s dealmaker in chief. “We need a leader that wrote The Art of the Deal ,” he said in the speech announcing his candidacy. “I’m a negotiator. I’ve done very well over the years through negotiation,” he said during a Republican debate. “That’s what I do, is deals,” he said in May. “I know deals, I think, better than anybody knows deals.” Rubbish. So far, Trump has made no deals at all, and the ones he thinks he’s made have unraveled. He has no deal with North Korea. Following his June 12 summit with Kim Jong Un, Trump declared on Twitter that “there is no longer a nuclear threat” from North Korea. In fact, recent satellite images show that North Korea has upgraded a nuclear facility. It also appears to be finalizing the expansion...

AP Photo/Evan Vucci President Donald Trump walks off after speaking at a Foxconn facility in Mt. Pleasant, Wisconsin M y friends, this is a dark hour. Intolerance, cruelty, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and environmental destruction have been let loose across the land. Trump controls the Republican Party, the Republican Party controls the House and Senate, and Trump may soon control the Supreme Court. But here’s the thing. Only 27 percent of Americans are Republican, according to the Gallup poll. Moreover, the vast majority of Americans disapprove of Trump. He lost the popular vote in 2016 by 2.8 million. Since then, his approval ratings haven’t exceeded 45 percent. The GOP itself is no longer a political party, anyway. It is now little more than Donald Trump, Fox News, a handful of billionaire funders, and rightwing Christians who oppose a woman’s right to choose, gay marriage, and the Constitution’s separation of church and state. Yet Trump is about to make the second Supreme Court...

AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta President Donald Trump gestures upon arrival at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. O n this coming Fourth of July, it’s worth pondering the true meaning of American patriotism—as opposed to the malignant, distorted view of it propounded by Donald J. Trump. For Trump, the central challenge of American patriotism is to secure our borders. “Without borders, there can be no nation,” he says. But excluding foreigners has never been a dominant part of American patriotism. For most of its existence America has been relatively open to people from the rest of the world, especially those fleeing tyranny and violence. America’s core struggle has been one of inclusion, not exclusion. We have strived to extend equal citizenship to Native Americans, African Americans, women, and LGBTQs. The poems of Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes, and the songs of Woody Guthrie, expressed loving devotion to America while turning that love into a demand for justice. “This...